social media campaigning@gold

Reflection

Truth verification was the most challenging thing I did during the course period

Truth verification was the most challenging thing I did and thought of during the course period. I inevitably had to deal with this issue because of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster. As soon as the disaster happened, I started to follow seemingly trustworthy people on Twitter to get the accurate information about radioactivity. I learned all sorts of things about nuclear plants and radiation from how historically nuclear plants came into existence in Japan in the first place to the maximum permissible exposure to radiation. The history of the Japanese nuclear plants seemed to be trustworthy but it does not mean it is the cause of the problem. People were not just deceived by a limited number of bad people about the introduction and spread of nuclear plants. We must have been deceiving each other about the safety of the nuclear plants. We did not pay too much attention to them. Maybe that ignorance was the cause of the catastrophe. The truth of a case like this is so hard to verify, while things like the maximum tolerable exposure to radiation is more scientific and easier to judge. The latter might be the fact rather than the truth. Ok, I redefine the subject of this blog post, it is fact verification and truth verification. The former is easy to verify using social media such as Twitter. However for the latter, social media could confuse you. You can know what’s going on about something by looking at pictures shared through social media but it’s so difficult to grasp the truth behind it. Through the course I learned many platforms people have developed in order to grasp the truth of what’s going on around the world. I’m not sure if I’m supportive of all of them but at least I could know the massive efforts of those people. That’s the most useful thing I learned through the course. I will keep an eye on the development of those platforms and developers in the future.